Time, And Occasion, To Redeem Yourself, If You Will

This is what I wrote to the CMA President about the CAMJ:

Dear Dr. Collins-Nakai,

I write this to appreciate some of the effort you have put in vis-a-vis the CAMJ. Bringing in a Chief Justice for an Editorial Governance Plan, appointing an Interim Editor and Editor Emeritus, assuring editorial independence to the incoming editor, being ready to carry out changes in the JOC, are all commendable executive decisions. In the circumstances in which you are placed, and with all the strong pressures on you, I must acknowledge you are trying to put in a brave effort.

I understand the difficult predicament in which you are placed today. While you must carry out damage control, you must also walk the tight rope of protecting Association interests, and also ensure the CAMJ’s credibility as a biomedical journal does not suffer. Difficult situations to shoulder for anyone, howsoever efficient one may be.

However, I feel there is a way out. When the issue becomes very convoluted, and the knots very tangled, often a simple tug does the trick. The solution is at hand shaking distance, if one is ready to remove the blindfold which subsidiary concerns impose upon us. Archimedes tried his intellectual might to resolve the issue till lying in the bath, the ‘eureka’ solution came flooding to him as an insight. Similar will be your condition if you allow yourself the luxury of quiet introspection. And it’s not a luxury, really.

I wish to share that with you. The straight and obvious solution, which often eludes us because it appears uncomfortable to take.

What Need Be Done

Just go ahead and reinstate the sacked editors. Admit it was a mistake. You, as Association caretaker, and CMA Holdings were being embarrassed by all the writings in the CAMJ, true. But you still respect its editorial independence, will stand by its right to publish what it considers the truth if based on evidence and for patient welfare, the only two real pillars of biomedicine. You will encourage it to go ahead and become one of the best biomedical journals in the world. The editor who could make it one of the top five has the potential, and steam, left to make it rise even further. Repose full confidence in him, speak courageously to your Association colleagues and office-bearers that it be done, and be ready to face the consequences of such a bold, but correct, decision.

It is not often that destiny offers such a great opportunity to anyone to redeem herself. It has offered itself to you. Do not let go of it. I know it is not an easy decision to take. But then this is not an ordinary situation to encounter too. And this is not an ordinary opportunity thrown at you in the form of a challenge.

With one stroke, you will have quietened the entire furore. With one action you will have rewritten the entire course of biomedical publication.
We all know how inconvenient editors have been sacked before at JAMA and NEJM. We all know it was wrong, but no one had the nerve to right it. So people accepted, and most have got cynical this is the only way things function. I see this as a great opportunity for you to change it all.

Let’s forget the smaller interests. Let’s forget the clever advice that lawyers and smart alecks will offer you. They are not ill intentioned, but lack the vision that concentrating on the larger interests can lead you to. For at stake is a possible paradigm shift in biomedical publication. If once one upright editor is reinstated, and given full powers to go ahead, it will be written in golden letters in the history of such publications.

If you have the will, and nerve, to take it.

Not taking such a decision is easy. Taking such a decision, which you know your conscience propels you to but extraneous considerations may prevent you from, will be the true test of character that history, and posterity, will judge you by.

If you decide to take it, my faith in justice and fair play will be redeemed. If you decide not to, my conviction that ideals and principles are just empty phrases mouthed by us all to impress audiences will be confirmed.

You have an option. To redeem the noble, or confirm the commonplace.

If you redeem, I have no doubt the whole medical word will rise and salute your courageous decision. If you do not, well, it will be another pedestrian President who went the expedient way in another medical association. All too familiar a scenario.

Destiny Beckons

Destiny beckons. But it won’t offer many opportunities to make your impress ‘on the sands of time’.

This may be your chance.

Please ponder over what I have written when you are very calm, seek counsel over it from your real well wishers (who may be very few, really), and then take a bold decision.

I have known people who are bold but not right. I have also known people who are right but not bold. You have the singular opportunity to be both.

I pray you don’t let go of it.

In so doing, not only will you redeem yourself, you will redeem all that is good and noble in the field of medicine whose ideals have been knocked around, true, but are the only things which sustain it beyond the trammels of hypocrisy and expediency.

Will you rise to the occasion? From the way you have conducted yourself till now, I have a strong feeling you just may.



Ajai
22 Mar 2006